Forum OpenACS Q&A: Another 4.6.2 Bug

From OpenACS Object Type Administration I'm getting the following when accessing top level Objects. For example - selecting objects gets me:

Request Error
Database operation "0or1row" failed (exception NSINT, "Query returned more than one row.")
    while executing
"ns_pg_bind 0or1row nsdb0 {
      select comments from user_tab_comments where table_name = 'ACS_OBJECTS'
      }"
    ("uplevel" body line 1)
    invoked from within
"uplevel $ulevel [list ns_pg_bind $type $db $sql"
    invoked from within
"db_exec 0or1row $db $full_name $sql"
    invoked from within
"set selection [db_exec 0or1row $db $full_name $sql]"
    ("uplevel" body line 2)
    invoked from within
"uplevel 1 $code_block "
    invoked from within
"db_with_handle db {
	set selection [db_exec 0or1row $db $full_name $sql]
    }"
    (procedure "db_string" line 7)
    invoked from within
"db_string table_comment "select comments from user_tab_comments where table_name = '[string toupper $table_name]'" -default """
    invoked from within
"if { [exists_and_not_null table_name] } {

Objects down the hierarchy like Relationship work fine. The error occurs on an 4.6.2 (tarball install) and PG 7.3.2 installation. I have 4.6.1 installed on another server with PG 7.2.4 and it works fine. I just got an additional drive for my laptop and I'm going to go ahead and sacrifice it to the cause and install Linux with PG 7.2.4 and 4.6.2 on it from the tarball since this should be the stable reference version and test all this out.

BTW - If anyone is using Jeff's photo-album, don't move to PG 7.3.2. Simply put - they are not compatible. I guess the same caveat goes for packages not in the core unless the maintainers have moved their code to work with 7.3.2 and have explicitly said so. I was experimenting with Jeff's photo album on my 7.2.4 installation and I naively installed it on 4.6.2/7.3.2 and it bombed. I knew well enough that I should have checked the code before...Once I get through some things I'll go into photo-album and fix what I can and try again. I'll diff to Jeff the fixes.

This should answer your last question (yes, apparently there are semantic differences beyond timestamp.)  I won't worry too much about this - I suspect acs_objects may actually have more than one "comment on" and that 7.2 may not have kept more than one around while 7.3 does, something along those lines.  I'll look into it.  Sorry we missed this in testing, direct object administration is something that's rarely used since in large installations it's useless.

Yeah, please let Jeff know about the photo-album stuff that breaks for 7.3, we will be officially supporting 7.3 for now on and he'll want to fix it, without doubt.

Probably simple stuff, I'd imagine.

Anyway, I've upgrade acs-kernel to fix the problem you discovered with the user_tab_comment view.  You can run acs-kernel/sql/postgresql/upgrade/upgrade-4.6.2-4.6.3.sql by hand, it just drops and redefines the view properly (we'll probably end up releasing a 4.6.3 quickly while we work on localization for 5.0)

Ok. I just finished going through all the packages and this is what's broken against PG 7.3.2: acs-schema, acs-person, address-book, CMS (sitemap & templates) CMS search isn't working for me on any platform, general-comments/acs-messaging, Monitoring (Table Analysis doesn't work at all), News, Jeff's photo-album (didn't test the original photo-album)

I still need to look into a couple of things, but this seems to be the bulk of it.

Thanks for your good work ferreting out brokeness, Randy, it's a big help.

There's also an automated test package in OpenACS that we want to start using more, as people get time to do so.

Jon: thanks for the schema browser fix.

Hi Peter - I agree. It doesn't seem like a very difficult decision to make and implement, other than perhaps there are some legacy sites out there that are utilizing for example, Ticket Tracker, and for whatever reason have not moved to Bug Tracker. This is a minor issue IMHO. Besides, removing these "deprecated" packages from the core distribution does not mean that they have to be gone forever. It's easy enough to create an archive for deprecated packages. Anyone who is interested can download and play with the caveat the those packages are "unsupported".

I know that one goal for oacs is to move all application packages outside the core distribution to a central repository making the core distribution smaller. I think this is a good first step in that direction and it would streamline efforts moving forward. I've also begun the task of cleaning deprecated procs out of the distribution and for a start submitted patches for acs-subsite/www/register. I have some coming up for Lars-blogger. I hope to complete this for the kernel/acs-subsite by end of this month with the rest of the packages to follow. Not having to worry about packages that aren't going to be around soon would of course streamline that effort as well...

Thanks for that Don. Well, then it seems the thing to do is to go ahead and make all the patches for the changes and once that is done, a decision regarding when to implement them and how much advance notice to give can be made... I'll continue making changes and making patches and then the core team can decide when and how you want to implement them. Sound like a plan?

Regarding obsolete packages - it looks like there's a general concensus on this issue. If indeed that is the case, then we just need a volunteer with access to openacs.org to make an "obsolete package repository" so we can clean the distribution a bit. Anyone???

I just completed testing of the full oacs distribution and these are my results. The following modules have problems:

1. address-book - Can't add a contact.
2. CMS - Sitemap and templates links are not functioning
3. Monitor - Statistics from top and Table analysis return db errors
4. News - Can't create a news item.
5. Ticket Tracker based on workflow package - Can't create a ticket.
6. ACS-Workflow - Can't start any new case
7. MP3-Jukebox - Followed the instructions faithfully and could not get any joy. Can't get into the admin functions since I get an error returned. Not sure what the problem is, I really did not look much further than that it was not working after I followed instructions...no time. But I would like to get this running...
8. acs-person - Can't create a new person.

I included "obsolete" modules for completeness and in case anyone wants to add an "known issues" to the docs for those packages. acs-schema, general-comments, acs-messaging, static-pages, lars-blogger are all working correctly. I created my own little shop in ecommerce and it's working nicely. Core Kernel admin functions like creating groups etc. are also functioning correctly.

There are some things I could not test throughly so perhaps someone can pitch in here. Functions like notifications etc. seem to be ok. But my sendmail is really broken on that machine - I will be installing qmail over the weekend, but until I do, I can't very well test the functionalities that send out mail. More importantly, I think that the acs-subsite stuff that requires sending out mail should be tested by someone. It should not take more than 30 mins to do this. I also did not test Robot-Detection or the gateway stuff. The user-preference package looks like it has a lot of promise. The apm loaded it, but something seemed strange. No postgresql model... It still got loaded by apm when it should have been under the PG incompatible list.

Having gone through the modules in the past few days has given me a much better holistic view of oacs. I have TONS of ideas that I will organize and take a look at soon. Please let me know if anything else is required on the testing end. I'll (work load permitting) look into fixing some of these issues in the next few days. 😊)

I've just discovered another bug in /acs-admin/users on 4.6.2/7.3.2. If you try to do a complex query using the group drop down, a db error is generated:

Database operation "select" failed (exception NSDB, "Query was not a statement returning rows.")
    while executing
"ns_pg_bind select nsdb0 {select distinct first_names, last_name, email, member_state, email_verified_p, cu.user_id
from cc_users cu, group_member_map ..."
    ("uplevel" body line 1)...

This error occurs only when a selection is made in the Group drop down.

Also, a friend who has been testing oacs as well, tells me that he has not been able to get the Registration Requires Email Verification functionality to work or for that fact any of the acs-subsite mail functions. He's running sendmail. Is qmail required? I don't think so, but perhaps someone can clarify. Is there special set-up required? His sendmail is working fine with other apps... Also, if someone can test the email stuff out, it would be great.

Database operation "0or1row" failed (exception NSINT, "Query returned more than one row.")
    while executing

kinda errors.

already filed a bug report, but ran across this thread, and figured I'd put it here too.

Thanks,

mhf.